“MAN, Blake was fine: ev’ry word that he spoke | |
| Snapped out like the crack of a whip. | |
| D’ye mind where he looked through the cannon smoke | |
| As the English let go their grip? | |
| For that one hot minute on Spion Kop. | 5 |
| God willin’, I’d roast ten years! | |
| No wonder the lecture was called to a stop | |
| Till the boys were dead with their cheers; | |
| And so,” said Burke with his glass in his hand, | |
| “God bless the burghers of Boerland!” | 10 |
| |
| “And Blake left a leg there,” ’t was Kelly stood up. | |
| “They’ve scattered the Irish Brigade: | |
| But few as they were they emptied their cup, | |
| And the man who dies twice isn’t made. | |
| ’Twas a fresh red mark on the old war-map: | 15 |
| They signed it, men, for us all, | |
| And we’d rather lie stiff with them there in the gap | |
| Than to cheer them in Mulligan’s Hall. | |
| Oh, the fights all along the Tugela were grand, | |
| So, God bless the burghers of Boerland!” | 20 |
| |
| “Ah, things have gone badly,” said Burke, “since then.” | |
| “In time,” said Shea, with a frown, | |
| “Two hundred and fifty thousand men | |
| Will wear forty thousand down.” | |
| “If I was De Wet,” said Burke, “I’d set—” | 25 |
| “If you? arrah whisht,” said Shea, | |
| “Phil Sheridan couldn’t give points to De Wet. | |
| In a dash and a smash and—away. | |
| He’d keep up the fight with a lone command, | |
| God bless the burghers of Boerland!” | 30 |
| |
| “And the Boers are Protestants. One would think,” | |
| Said Burke, “’twould for something count.” | |
| “In questions of loot,” said Shea with a wink | |
| “That wouldn’t reduce the amount. | |
| When Cromwell made Ireland an open grave | 35 |
| And gave us the edge of the knife, | |
| It wasn’t our souls he wanted to save, | |
| But to case us of land and life. | |
| And ’tis Ireland yet, lads, mountain and strand, | |
| So, God bless the burghers of Boerland!” | 40 |
| |
| “The smoke of their homesteads darkens the sky,” | |
| Said Burke, “but their guns are bright: | |
| Their women and children are herded to die. | |
| But they don’t give up the fight. | |
| The world has left them, more shame to the world, | 45 |
| To rastle their way to death. | |
| But an Englishman’s soul to the pit is hurled, | |
| When a Boer gives up his breath. | |
| And they’re fighting to-day from the Cape to the Rand: | |
| God bless the burghers of Boerland!” | 50 |
| |
| “A race doesn’t hate for the sake of hate, | |
| “Nor,” said Kelly, “when gun faces gun; | |
| But the bitter black flow’r grows early and late | |
| Where the killing of women is done: | |
| On the graves of the children its roots strike deep, | 55 |
| Then the hearts of live men it will clutch. | |
| And till Judgment their race will its foothold keep: | |
| You can’t kill the Irish—or Dutch! | |
| So, if none but us three were to stretch them a hand, | |
| God bless the burghers of Boerland!” | 60 |
| |
